Accessibility & Connectivity

Accessibility

We are committed to making our venues accessible to all, to ensure that everyone can take part in and enjoy the arts. The West Kowloon Cultural District and its venues will be accessible for all by observing universal accessibility standards.

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) will play a central role in achieving the aim of making the district accessible to all.

ICT can help improve the customer experience by implementing systems that offer real time traffic information and systems that help operators and management to control crowds

Apart from physical accessibility, ICT offers easy access to information, from information about ongoing and upcoming activities and ticketing information at the venue to real-time feeds of artists’ activities such as their preparations or behind-the-scene highlights

Connectivity

Getting to West Kowloon Cultural District is very easy, whether it is by rail, road, water, or foot.

The District will be closely connected with its neighbourhood, with footbridges and subways to link the District with Jordan and Tsim Sha Tsui areas

It will also be linked with the public transport system at MTR Kowloon Station and Austin Station, connecting the District with other parts of Hong Kong

To enhance connectivity to other districts and beyond, direct pedestrian linkages are proposed to connect the District to adjacent public transport nodes including the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, Airport Express, and cross-border ferry and coach terminuses

Travelling within the District will be fast, easy and eco-friendly.

A pleasant, traffic-free, pedestrian-friendly environment will be made available to visitors, by putting vehicular traffic underground

The compact layout allows the creation of 23 hectares of public open space and minimises distances between the District’s new cultural buildings and infrastructure

The Avenue will be the major activity spine providing shade and direct access throughout the entire district

Environmentally friendly transport system buses will be used to serve the Cultural District

ICT can help connect Hong Kong with the rest of the region and the world, and even connect the local art and non-art communities. The use of new media such as live broadcast of performances and online exhibitions enables us to extend our reach to new audience especially those outside Hong Kong. It also brings about tremendous opportunities for online participation and collaboration transforming the audience from a passive role to an active one.

Creating a new cultural hub from the ground up offers the West Kowloon Cultural District a unique opportunity to test out new initiatives and ideas, in particular in relation to creating a smart district that harnesses the power of technology while being environmentally friendly. To this end the Authority is currently investigating the use of safe, comfortable and sustainable fully automated vehicles to transport visitors throughout the District in the future.

A fully-autonomous, 11-passenger, electric vehicle has just arrived at the District and is currently on trial inside West Kowloon. Visitors can have a trial ride on a fixed route within the Nursery Park.

The French made autonomous vehicle uses state of the art multi-sensor technology that includes:-

Lidar uses invisible laser beams to build a view of the surrounding environment

GPS is applied for localisation

Odometer to measure the displacement and the wheels speed to estimate the velocity of the vehicle and confirm its position

Camera stereovision detects obstacles and estimates their position in regards to the vehicle

This particular driverless vehicle is already in use in Australia, France, New Zealand, Qatar, Singapore, Switzerland and the USA and as of the end of 2016 there were 30 vehicles on the road worldwide that had been used by over 100,000 passengers.